Japanese Fun Time

Or Why Japanese is Better than English.

Kobo Daishi was this famous Japanese Buddhist priest. and we’re talking famous like….umm…elvis presley famous. he pretty much invented the japanese language. sort of. see what happened was they stole the chinese writing and then daishi (die-she) created “uniquely” japanese symbols for all the sounds. later on they said, “fuck you and everything you have done for us, china.” and invaded. but that’s a different story.

real-life re-enactment:

scene: buddhist priest wandering around dispensing wisdom and becoming enlightened while making up lots of little squiggly lines to stand in for sounds.

“Hmmm,” he says to himself or possibly his disiples, “i am so cool with my striaght lines, curved lines, and truncated lines. i can do anything! i bet i could write a poem using each one of these sound-symbols ONLY ONCE.”

end real-life re-enactment.

and then that crazy bastard did. and it’s famous. cause he’s famous. and they used to alphabatize everything in the order of this poem. so like we have a-b-c, they had i-ro-ha. now for some obscure reason they have a-i-u. which makes a lot more sense really.

the point is–could we make a poem using only each letter of our alphabet once? i think not.

english-8, japanese 1.

the poem:

iroha nihohedo chirinuruo

wagayo darezo tsunenaramu

uwino okuyama kefu koete

asaki yumemiji wehimosezu

pronunciation (mainly for gene cause he told me he enjoyed the last one so much.):

E–row–ha__knee–hoe–hey–dough__chee(se)–re(ad)–new–rue–oh

wa(ter)–gah–yo__dar–ray–zo(sow with a z sound)__tsu(nami)–neigh–gnaw–ra(-ra cheerleader)–moo(cow)

ooo–whee–no__O–koo–yaw(n)–ma(ma)__kay–phoo__co(ne)–A–tay

aah–saw–key__you–may–me–gie(soft g)__weigh–he(pronoun)–mow–say–zoo

pronunciation key:

capital vowels means the general pronunciation of a-e-i-o-u.

parentheses after a letter which create a word like yaw(n), means pronounce yawn but leave off the n.

parentheses with descriptors are to help with knowing the right way to say it, eg (pronoun), ‘he sells seashells at the seashore.’

translated poem:

colors are fragrant, but they fade away

in this world of ours, none lasts forever

today, cross the high mountains of life’s illusions

and there will be no more shallow dreaming,

no more drunkeness